Page 17 of Fragile Kiss (Fragile 2)
When he had the guy come connect them, he was sure she’d noticed them. It happened in the middle of the day on a Friday. Back when they were still together, and he knew she was going to be at home working all day. Fridays were also the day his yard guy came to trim the bushes and cut the grass, so maybe she thought the noise was just more beautification work being done. The whole neighborhood was used to him giving his front yard the royal treatment by now.
Then they broke up, and in the long hours before he boarded the plane to go back home and hopefully clear things up with Lillian, he found himself watching the cameras incessantly. He would wake up every couple of hours to check and make sure she was okay. See if anything was noticeably amiss. She had sounded different in the breakup text than compared to her usual casual voice. Maybe it was his own frenzy of panic and shock at the suddenness of it—having no warning whatsoever and all—but he was convinced she sounded too calm for things to be okay. She must be going through something tough. Maybe her mind got away with her again; he knew how she would fixate on something and make herself believe something totally irrational about a situation. That had to be the case. Distance wasn’t ideal between them, but surely it wouldn’t so abruptly end their relationship like this.
Right?
The plane ride back to L.A. felt so long he was sure he boarded the wrong one and was going to end up overseas. There was no option to purchase wi-fi, and he had already adopted the habit of checking his cameras every time he thought about it (which was all the time). He felt in the dark and very disconnected. Certainly something was happening right now that would explain what was going on. At least if she couldn’t talk to him about it, maybe he could see it.
It was sort of wrong. He hadn’t put them up to spy on her. He’d done it to keep an eye on his house when he was away. The view of her place just happened to be on one, maybe two of the cameras. Not planned.
The whole weekend he was home, Lillian never mentioned the cameras. They were small. Barely noticeable, in fact. His paycheck from Janine was plenty enough for him to buy the best technology on the market. It was worth it, in his eyes. He could watch his house. But, if he was being honest, he wanted to make sure he could keep an eye on Lillian when he wasn’t there physically. Not to spy on her, but because she wasn’t well. No one else seemed to be worried. Not her family, at least. Someone needed to help. It might as well be him. At one point right after he saw how great his outdoor cameras were, he caught himself thinking about ways he could keep an eye on Lillian inside. That way he would know if she had passed out from another flare-up. Without him there, no one would ever find her. What if she hit her head and lay there for hours?
He was so close to mentioning it to her, but then he got her breakup text. It made him even more worried about her health. He knew her flare-ups were more likely to happen when she was stressed, and he was certain that she was at least as stressed as he was about this. For an entire day, he wracked his brain in a desperate attempt to conjure up a reply. It shouldn’t be about the cameras, that much he was sure. The situation was very fragile, and telling her that he could see three out of four sides of her house at any given moment probably wouldn’t be what she wanted to hear. Neither would asking her to brainstorm with him about ways to track her flare-ups.
So he flew back, hopefully to resolve the breakup, get back together, have a wild night or two in bed, and resume the relationship as normal.
Only one of those happened, and the short time before he left wasn’t a good sign for the future of their relationship.
He didn’t talk to anyone the whole way back to Los Angeles. The only time he used his voice was when he ordered a large coffee with a shot of hazelnut syrup before boarding the plane. As he watched the barista shoot the syrup from the glass bottle into his thermos, he felt his whole body droop—and not from tiredness. Physically, he felt pretty good. Lillian taking him by surprise in the middle of his yard work had revived him from the weeks of sexual deprivation. She was small, and looked the opposite of someone who would take charge, but the way she made the first move and essentially commanded him to stop what he was doing and pay attention to her was a huge turn-on. How a dainty flower like her could have that kind of power over him, a beast with muscles of steel, was lost for logic. All he knew was that he loved it.
But then she had woken up as he was packing the last of his things, and the harsh words had mentally drained him more than he would have ever anticipated. It was as far from how he wanted the weekend to end as possible.
In retrospect, he probably should have let her know he was leaving. His plan of quietly going to the airport while she was sleeping didn’t exactly happen. But that probably wouldn’t have gone very well either. He just didn’t want to ruin their short time together. Why couldn’t they have started romping around as soon as he got back? Why did it have to happen in the hours before he had to leave again?
There were too many questions in his head, and his brain shut down at the first thought of how to sort them all out. He had been enjoying Los Angeles so much up until the point of the breakup text. Hours and hours of researching the best cameras for his house and trying to come up with a way to make sure she was fine in her house all alone were wasted.
Now it was just him and his house, and any time he checked the cameras was either going to be in response to a notification of something suspicious going on, or just to see how unruly his yard looked.
No one could ever make my yard as picturesque as I can, he thought, half sadly and half amazed that the word “picturesque” had a place in his mind somewhere. Maybe spending time with Lillian and her expansive collection of books had made him smarter in some ways.
It had been a few days since he had dared to check his house cameras. There had been no motivation. Not even a single ping from his phone about movement around there.
Home—it didn’t feel much like home now that he wasn’t there, and since Lillian was out of the picture for the foreseeable future. Even his life in this gorgeous, sunny city felt stagnant. Workouts felt robotic. Luckily Janine hadn’t commented that anything was different. She wasn’t the type to keep these things to herself. Sometimes it seemed like she analyzed every movement he made and commented on his performance and attitude afterward.
Today was Wednesday. Technically, it was almost Thursday because it was 11 pm. Cayden sighed. Janine had gone to the city with her husband for a night of networking with other high-profile people over drinks at some swanky rooftop bar. At their quick workout earlier in the afternoon she couldn’t stop talking about it, even while she was panting from her leg lifts and squats. Cayden stayed quiet, pretending he was listening when really his mind was somewhere far away. He only spoke when she asked a question, or to introduce her to the next set.
He looked out the window of his loft. The moon was too far up to see unless he leaned over and poked his head out the window. Sparse clouds were rushing past the moon, blocking its light then making way for it again.
Kind of like my history with women. He scowled and lay on his stomach, hanging halfway off the bed. Every time I get close to one and start getting comfortable, I get screwed over. Some shit happens, and I can never make it work.
He lay there for a while, blank-minded. He didn’t feel like doing anything, even though he had emails to respond to and probably a slew of text messages as well. The message tone beeped on his phone as he stared at the floor. He ignored it. At least people here were including him in their plans. He made friends quickly. He knew exactly why: because he was hot. He knew it and he knew everyone else knew it. It was part of his job, anyway, so he took it as a sign he was doing something right.
At least that’s one thing I’m doing right.
The thought crossed his mind to check his cameras. Just to see what was happening. At least he could see his flowers. His yard lamp should be on right now, and even the silhouette would be better than nothing. Reaching for his phone, he opened the app and wished he had some plants to tend to here in Los Angeles.
I didn’t expect that I would want to go home this badly. He had been gone for weeks. It was already much longer than Janine’s estimated timeframe in the beginning. He didn’t want to think about how to approach her about how much longer she wanted him to stay.
Seeing his driveway on the small screen of his phone brought a sense of relief. The hedges lining the length of it were in pretty good shape, but not as good as they would be if he were home right now. He stared at the screen, taking everything in. How had this house that he had lived in for less than a year become such an anchor for him?
Probably because she’s there. It was true. He hadn’t really felt any sense of attachment there until he started getting to know Lillian. He rubbed the corner of his eye. Move on, Cayden. She said she wanted you to. She said she was going to.
He switched to the next camera that had a full view of the front yard. Trying to be positive, he told himself that everything looked all right. Nothing was overgrown, at least. Not like Lillian’s yard. Why in the hell she wanted her yard to look like a jungle, he had no idea. It always irritated him.
His eye caught something in the corner of the screen, out by the road. In the light he couldn’t tell what it was. Curious, he switched to the last camera that had a view of the side yard and part of Lillian’s yard.
There, in full view, was a car parked in between her house and his. And it wasn’t her car.
Who would be over there? Lillian didn’t have many friends, and she liked it that way. She didn’t make any effort to go out and meet new people, so it couldn’t be anyone new. The only person he had ever seen at her house was—
